Of the Coming of Django
by Nils Jansen
Summary: Set in 1900, an elderly Django attends an opera performance that brings back memories from years ago. A one-shot that might expand later.


**Grand Opera House  
San Francisco, California****  
****November 28, 1900**

Within the timeframe of less than a week, this evening marked the third of four major opera premieres in San Francisco. Despite surmising that a fair number of people would consider him out of place at the opera, even in his free-wheeling adopted city, it didn't matter to Django Freeman if all they saw was an elderly Negro trying to grasp at the _non plus ultra _of "cultural uplift."

They didn't know him.

They didn't know that he had escaped slavery.

They didn't know that he had a greater command of German, the language of the operas, than many of them.

They didn't know the sense of duty he felt to attend of the performances.

They didn't know that he had brought about the destruction of one of the largest plantations in Mississippi over 40 years ago. In a fiery fashion, echoing the conclusion of the opera that would be performed two nights later. The twilight of corrupt men and women, who had forsaken love for power and self-aggrandizing glory through inglorious means.

Whatever misgivings Django might have had, he dismissed. He had been through much worse. As it had the other two evenings, these thoughts faded away during the previous three hours of music and voices, portraying a mythical world whose characters didn't seem that much different from more recent times.

Even his sense of duty gave way to something else. Especially during a pivotal moment of the opera's third act, its beauty resonating with Django in a manner he found almost too painful to bear.

* * *

A brilliant otherworldly chord echoed throughout the Grand Opera House, followed by the soprano Lillian Nordica singing her first notes of the evening.

_Heil dir…_

The house became almost silent for a brief moment as the chord faded, save for a few woodwinds.

_Sohhhhhhhhn-nuhhhhhhh!_

As Nordica stretched out _Sonne_, a slightly higher-pitched chord emerged with greater force. This time supported by a crescendo in the brass and timpani, translating into sound the brilliance of the solar orb, which her character had not seen for many years.

After several seconds, Nordica's voice and most of the orchestra faded. Just a few strings, high-pitched winds, and a plucked harp remained, themselves fading into a relaxed afterglow.

Silence.

The initial otherworldly chord pierced the hall again, fading as it had before.

_Heil dir…_

_Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiicht!_

Light! A new chord echoed the one that accompanied _Sonne_, sounding even more intense than the first.

This time, the chord remained unresolved.

Silence.

More softly than previously, the same otherworldly chord appeared a third time.

_Hail, glorious light of day! _

_Heil…_

At _dir_, the violins interjected with a brief G note, initiating a tender and turgid melody by quickly going up almost an entire octave.

But not quite.

Just up to E, where an array of instruments created an even more brilliant and extended crescendo:

… _loyyyyyyyych-_

Then F: _tennn-_

Then, finally, resolving the tension, the promised G: _-derrr_

… _leuchtenderTaaaaaaaaaag!_

The orchestra's sounds merged into an aurally blinding blur, greeting the day of liberation from the ring of fire, by the only man brave enough to cross it unscathed.

After the crescendo collapsed upon itself, a solo melody sighed from the strings. Was it peace? Was it love? Was it liberation?

* * *

Holding in his emotions was difficult enough for Django near the end of the previous opera. A father reluctantly punishing his own child for executing his will. Taking away all her powers, putting her to sleep, and surrounding her with a ring of fire. But it was hearing "her" name, or something at least similar enough, that made it even more powerful for him. He felt chills as her father, the great one-eyed god, apprehended her with the ominous command:

_Steh'! __Brünnhilde!_

And now, almost one opera later, she had returned. Alive again, the string melody continuing to accompany her joyous wonder at returning to the realm of the living.

* * *

_Long I have slept  
but now I wake._

_What hero is this  
who has roused me?_

Percussive, staccato flutes cued the re-entry of the tenor Andreas Dippel. A heroic theme emerged in the brass, leaping across the scale, and repeating twice with slight variations as it accompanied Dippel's brief narration. How his character crossed the fire to rescue Brünnhilde. At the end of the third variation of the brass melody, the character identified himself.

_Siegfried bin ich,  
der dich erweckt'._

The theme continued to thrust onward, culminating in a din of brass, timpani, and numerous other instruments climaxing together, over which Brünnhilde screamed to the gods:

_HEIIIIIILLLLL euch, Götter!_

The orchestral _tutti_ quickly receded, giving way to undulating, drifting melody.

_Heil dir, Welt!_

Brünnhilde collapsed towards the ground, the higher-pitched instruments trilling as they deliriously mounted the scale, accompanying her intoxicated ecstasy.

_Heil dir, prannnnn-gen-de Er-de!_

Yet another crescendo in brass and timpani supported this new climax, followed by another sweet string theme that echoed its predecessor.

_I sleep no more  
and awake, I see Siegfried.  
He it is  
who has woken me!_

The horns returned with renewed force as Siegfried venerated his mother.

_O Heil der Mutter,  
die mich gebar._

With the same theme appearing in the strings, Brünnhilde did the same, remembering her half-human sister.

_O Heil der Mutter,  
die dich gebar!_

And the earth that nourished him…

_Heil der Erde,  
die mich genährt!_

_Heil der Erde,  
die dich genährt!_

* * *

The action onstage faded for Django, who closed his eyes, letting his ears, mind, and body absorb the sensations created by the invisible waves of instruments and voices. The music from Richard Wagner's opera _Siegfried_ became his own. Django remembered the long-ago campfire where he first heard about the much older legend upon which Wagner partially based his four-part opera _Der Ring des Nibelungen_. King Schultz, the German bounty hunter who liberated him and trained him to become one himself, had become intrigued by the name of Django's wife. It prompted Schultz to recount the legend surrounding her near-namesake, and made him confer onto Django his own mythical status.

"_I've never given anyone his freedom before," Schultz confessed to him. "And now that I have, I feel vaguely responsible for you. And for a German to meet a real-life Siegfried, that's a big deal."_

After the brief duet of Brünnhilde and Siegfried, the orchestra played a loud section of unalloyed joy, which would be followed by more of the pair's duet.

The music reinforced to Django that everything he did at Candie Land was justified. After one of Candie's minions killed Schultz. After he saw his _geliebter Frau _for the first time in what seemed an eternity, mishandled by some of Candie's other thugs as they dragged her naked from the euphemistically innocuous-sounding "box," under the pretense of being prepared to provide what were euphemistically called "services" for Schultz.

At that time, Django had to hold back his emotions, his desire to start blasting his pistol at the bastards who casually countenanced the sum total of horrors he had witnessed and imagined.

Now, in the darkness of the opera house, and with the passage of many years, the compelling force of conventions of "manliness" began to give. Django felt that he had to unleash the other emotions that he could not have shown during that horrible time. Emotions that barriers of coldness and anger kept at bay, which the scene between Brünnhilde and her father a few nights earlier had only just now begun to break down. Otherwise, he would burst or collapse.

He let himself recall the life he had shared with Broomhilda. The mirage of her beauty that would appear to him when she was held captive by Candie, and which he once again now had.

Someday, he would see her again on that beautiful shore. And, like Siegfried and Brünnhilde, they would once again embrace fervently.

_O Siegfried!  
Siegfried!  
Seliger Held!_

* * *

To see an excerpt of the _Siegfried _segment above, please visit: watch?v=HJnDoKOjKLE


End file.
